Abroad: Book One (The Hellum and Neal Series in LGBTQIA+ Literature 2)

by Liz Jacobs

  Nick didn’t.

  “Good. Let’s go.”

  +

  They wound up in the sculpture garden where he’d poured his heart out to Dex. Why was he only here post–panic attack? And why did he keep having those in front of people?

  Izzy was silent as they walked up to it. Last time, the trees had leaves on them, and it had been dark. Nick was surprised to see the park so sparse now. So much less mysterious in the gray light of day, with weak sunlight streaming through the bare November branches. He’d barely even noticed there was some sort of building at the end of it all—a typical brown London brick with bright blue railings on the steps and the walkway.

  When he gingerly lowered himself onto the rocker, he didn’t fall. Izzy followed suit, and together they swayed for a bit, quiet amid the city traffic noise.

  He was with Izzy, so the quiet didn’t last for long. “So, you’re gay, then?”

  What a question to lead with. “Honestly? I don’t know. But I think I might be. I mean. Probably.”

  “You’ve never been with a bloke?”

  Nick shook his head. His feet were cold. He probably needed to invest in something other than Chucks, now that he thought about it. He’d left his winter boots back home.

  “What about a girl?”

  Nick finally looked up at where she was watching him, bouncing slowly up and down on her own weirdo bench. “Yeah.”

  She nodded like that explained it, even though it explained absolutely nothing to Nick. “And you just didn’t … sorry. This is so completely none of my business.”

  “It’s okay. Honestly, I don’t know.” He looked up at the sky, the sunlight was diffused by low-hanging clouds. He’d forgotten his scarf, and now he shivered in the chill. “I can’t. Not with my family.”

  “Would they be very angry?”

  “I don’t know how to explain. It’s never been an option. Not how I grew up.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s how they grew up, too. Back there, it was not talked about. If it was, it wasn’t good.” How to truly describe the insular circle of friends his parents had surrounded themselves with? Jewish intelligentsia who feared much and talked largely of high art, or science, and only sometimes of politics—in hushed voices and in vetted company. Their kitchen table was always crowded with makeshift dinners and discussions of how cultural standards had fallen along with the government and taken intellectual thought with them. Queerness would never even enter into such conversation. Once, Nick remembered someone mentioning a particularly flamboyant pop star. Mom had wrinkled her nose. Distasteful. In her reality, being gay was like being a wizard. Outside her realm.

  And then, America. A fleeting sense of freedom quickly replaced by the sharp edge of incongruence.

  “I literally can’t imagine telling them. They’ll never understand. It’s like when my sister decided to be vegetarian for two years and every time my mom made dinner, she kept forgetting, because why would anyone be vegetarian? Does that make sense?”

  “But America isn’t Russia, right?”

  “My mom isn’t very American.” Ten years on, she surrounded herself with Russian friends, Russian books, Russian movies. “It was hard on my parents, leaving, and with my dad … I can’t imagine doing that to her.”

  Izzy was quiet for a long time.

  “Please don’t tell anyone else.”

  Dex. He meant, don’t tell Dex. For some reason, the idea of Dex finding out, or figuring it out, or even knowing already but also aware that Nick was scared, made him feel panicked and sick. It fed on itself and dizzied him.

  “I won’t, babe. I promised. I’m sorry it’s this hard, but I’m really glad you told me.”

  Nick breathed in and out. “Yeah. I’m glad I did, too.” He was, he thought. Somewhere beneath the panic and the embarrassment, the banal tragedy of it all, he felt a sense of gratitude to no longer be the only person in the world to know that he was so far from a perfect son.

  Back in his room, Nick waited for the walls to crash down around him. It was a shock that things looked exactly the same. His room was just as he’d left it to meet Izzy. Socks balled up at the foot of his bed, duvet sliding off, his glasses resting on the windowsill. Perpetually warm, the radiator blasting heat into stuffy air.

  Everything was the same except his own perception. It would have been much easier if he felt a lightness in his shoulders, but he didn’t. Izzy was wonderful, but Izzy wasn’t his sister. She wasn’t his mother. She wasn’t the one he was scared to glimpse over his shoulder in case they guessed the truth. Izzy existed in a world where difference was only that—a difference. It wasn’t moral failing, grotesque disappointment. Difference wasn’t danger.

  In his unchanged room, for just a moment, he wondered what it would be like. To stop being afraid. To accept the truth.

  To look his mom in the eye and say it.

  He plopped down onto his bed and mindlessly counted up the number of letters in all the words printed across his postcards. He knew they didn’t, but every time he hoped that all the letters would divide into three. He needed a word with five letters in it to make it work. He was still looking for one.

  Impossible, that’s what it was. Literally. He couldn’t picture telling his family.

  He could sooner tell them he was dropping out of school and becoming a construction worker.

  You know. It’s 2014. Your mum might surprise you.

  No, Nick knew better. The only Melnikov who could surprise anyone was him.

  +

  It was strange how time worked. One minute, Nick felt like he’d only been in London for a week at most, and the next, early December was knocking on his door and he was swept up in end-of-term mania along with everybody else.

  Dex texted.

  Haven’t forgotten about the cooking test :) got caught up in projects & fam stuff but mb next week sometime?

  Nick had waited for it, despite himself. He barely had a moment to see anyone either, but every time his phone vibrated or lit up, he looked for Dex’s name. Every time it was someone else, he told himself that the churning in his gut was relief.

  Nick shoved his phone under a pile of papers. Then he pulled it out again to look at the message. To see Dex’s name addressing itself to Nick. It wasn’t a mistake, either, no matter how hard it was to believe.

  He pushed the phone away again, but his mind wouldn’t settle back into his reading. His eyes scanned the same paragraph about the War of the Roses again and again, the repetition of it droning in the back of his mind. The memory of Dex’s hand hot on his wrist intruded in the forefront.

  Dex’s hand on his wrist, Dex’s body looming over his. His beautiful face with its wide brown eyes intent on Nick. If it wasn’t the most ridiculous idea in the world, Nick would have believed Dex had gotten close to him on purpose.

  If Dex had a league, Nick would have been disqualified before even entering the competition. But he’d had to curl his knees up just to hide that he’d gone half hard at what had been perfectly regular, friendly sort of touching, and it had been humiliating. It had been electric.

  He’d told Izzy he didn’t know for sure, and he hadn’t really lied. It was a real possibility that if, in some other universe, he got to kiss a boy, he wouldn’t feel a thing. But that possibility was harder to believe after Dex had crossed the few feet of bed between them and woke Nick’s body up in a shower of sparks.

  Nick was busy. The coursework seemed almost overwhelming at times, and he was going to be damned if he fucked up in a way that didn’t land him the grades he wanted. He should have been telling Dex he didn’t have time for another lesson.

  But he didn’t. I’m free Sunday the 13th. He hit send before he could change his mind.

  A week and a half from now. Nick licked his lips and tried not to think about how that date was six days before he was due to fly back home for Christmas break. It barely seemed possible. He didn’t feel ready.

  19

  Dex was
sick of the same four walls of his room but too lazy to get his arse to the library. Plus, he was starving. He shut his laptop and allowed himself a luxurious hour break with a promise of enjoying it if he got right back to his desk for more data sifting. Right now, his eyes were fucking crossing.

  He went searching for some sort of sustenance that wasn’t caffeine in a jar and found Jonny rooting around the cupboards in the kitchen like a rabid fox.

  “Hey, mate. We have nothing but biscuits and insta-noodles in here. This is highly unsatisfactory.”

  “Maybe we should suck it up and get a Tesco order. This is pretty dire.” He peered inside the fridge. Pickle, cheese, brown sauce, and something that had probably at one point been some delightful leftover roast chicken, which looked like Dex should toss it into a hazardous waste bin and wear a protective suit in the process. He shut the door. “Takeaway?”

  “Please.”

  They ate their curries on the sofa with the telly, as always, on half mute. To the drone of the BBC, Dex filled himself on poppadoms and green curry and washed it all down with beer. “So, what’s up with you?”

  “Dunno. A shitload of essays. You?”

  “A shitload of experimental data. Bloody well sick of it, to be honest. I can’t believe it’s basically end of term.”

  Jonny nodded and took a long sip of his own beer. He was looking at the television like it actually had something good on.

  “Y’alright, man?”

  “What? Oh yeah, ’course.”

  They’d been missing each other due to everyone’s mad last dash of term, but now he could see the restless way in which Jonny shifted on the sofa, like he couldn’t get comfortable.

  “You are so lying.”

  “What? I’m fine! What the fuck are you on about?”

  “You look bloody knackered and cagey and weird. Is it your parents? Has something happened?”

  Jonny’s expression melted into something Dex did not expect—an impish sort of pleasure. Not his parents, then. Dex narrowed his eyes.

  “All right. But you can’t tell anyone, all right?” Jonny set his beer down onto the coffee table. “All right?”

  “All right, all right! Spill it, and leave no detail untouched.”

  “So, I’ve been seeing someone? Dating. Proper dating.”

  Dex grinned. The penny had dropped about two seconds before Jonny said it, but now the shadows under his baby blues made sense. Dex missed those sorts of sleepless nights. The closest he’d come recently was losing his shit on Nick’s bed and running out like an idiot. “Thought so. And who’s the lucky—” Another penny dropped. “Oh blimey, fucking hell, it is not—”

  “Dexter.” Dex shut up. “Look at my face. I am happy. Do not fucking ruin this for me.”

  Dex took a deep breath. “It seems like you and Lance are, in fact, quite happy together.” Just because Dex thought Lance was a bloody idiot didn’t mean the dude didn’t have excellent taste in the people he chose to date. By the looks of things, he was making Jonny properly happy. Well.

  Jonny beamed like someone had turned a torch on inside him. “It’s brilliant. He’s so lovely. I know he can be a lot sometimes, but he isn’t always like that, all right? He’s so kind, and he really is super clever.”

  Jonny looked down at his beer, and his face broke into the sort of smile that felt almost too private for Dex to be witnessing. A pang shot through him. Jonny deserved no less than someone who was kind to him, and if nothing else, Lance had always seemed to appreciate him.

  “And the sex is. I can’t. I can’t even tell you. It’s off the charts amazing.”

  Dex was trying to be nice, but he wasn’t a saint. “Really? Lance?”

  “Yes! Lance! He’s, like. Yeah.” Jonny’s cheeks flushed red under his lowered pale lashes. “Like … really. Yeah. Wow.”

  It was impossible not to smile back when Jonny grinned. “That’s great, mate. I’m so happy for you.” And he was, too. If he was also wistful, that was all right. Dex bit adieu to referring to Lance as Tweedle Dee, even in his head. “So, is it serious?”

  “It is for me. I’m pretty sure it is for Lance, too. He actually— He invited me back to his family’s for Christmas.”

  “Whoa. That is pretty serious. Are you going to go, d’you think?”

  Jonny sighed. It appeared that only the thought of home could dim his light right about now. “I dunno. I want to, a lot, but there’s my mum and dad.”

  “Have they said anything?”

  “Well, no. It’s assumed I’ll be there. I really don’t want to see them, though,” he said quietly.

  “It was pretty bad last time, wasn’t it?”

  “It was shite. Before Lance asked, I had considered staying here for hols.”

  “But?”

  “But it’s selfish to take him up on the offer, innit?”

  “Is it? Or is it protecting yourself from crap you don’t deserve?”

  “I guess.” He didn’t sound convinced at all, but at least he did appear to be considering other options. That was a good step, probably.

  “I’m sorry,” Dex offered. It felt wholly inadequate.

  “Not your fault. Thanks for not being a dickhead about Lance and me.”

  “I may be a sort of dickhead, but I’m not that much of a dickhead,” Dex protested. “You’re a dickhead.”

  “I have never been a dickhead in all my life,” Jonny protested, and to be fair, he was absolutely right. How they wound up with Jonny in their lives was unclear, but Dex was not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

  +

  Izzy had decided that they needed a group study session. It was a strange thing to arrange. They all studied completely different topics apart from him and Alex, and at best they’d all be sat in a room going bonkers simultaneously. But Izzy had sounded so off her rocker when she’d suggested it, Dex had acquiesced just to keep her from rolling off a cliff.

  Now—as Dex had predicted—they were all squashed into their living room, every piece of furniture and available floor surface taken up by humans, books, and laptops.

  Nat, for the first time in a couple of weeks, joined them. Dex did his best to suppress both his surprise and his pleasure, lest he spook her. Alex had pulled him aside and told him that Nat had been feeling horrifically guilty for blowing up but was still fucked up over the whole thing, so this was her own small step back to normal. Alex had had to drag her there a bit, but she did come, which seemed to be a good sign.

  Nat had brought her laptop along with a pile of marked-up papers, and she settled in to working on her thesis two feet away from Izzy, whose hopeful face said it all. Dex wanted to hug her. He hoped Nat being there was a good thing and not an awful distraction for her.

  So between those two and Jonny and Lance on the sofa completely unaware of anybody else in the world, Dex was having a hard time concentrating. And this was before you threw Nick in the mix.

  Dex had managed not to see him since the night in Nick’s room. He hadn’t been avoiding him, he had been genuinely busy. He’d gone home one weekend to see Al and his parents, and every other day he was either revising or working, working or revising. His only nod to civility had been to send Nick a text and arrange for another cooking date. Not a date-date, just a cooking thing, but even so, when Izzy opened the front door and Nick walked through, Dex’s heart kicked up like he was being chased.

  Nick had smiled politely at everyone, giving Dex the barest of glances, and then settled in close to Izzy’s side and buried himself in his laptop. It was a strange feeling, this slight resentment towards Izzy.

  They’d had a moment. Dex knew it had been a moment. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what sort of moment it had been. Had it been just him? He didn’t think so. He’d locked Izzy’s assumption that Nick fancied him inside his brain, and every now and then he would pull it out and consider it. Like a kid, he had memorised her every word and repeated it to himself.

  He watches you. All the time.


  Not today, he wasn’t. Nick kept his nose either in his laptop or in one of a thousand printouts he had brought with him. Every now and then, he would say something to Izzy.

  Dex shook his head to clear it. This was stupid. If nothing else, he had a shitload of revising to do. He clicked his laptop back to life and concentrated.

  +

  “I can’t bloody think anymore. Like, the word zeitgeist no longer looks like a word. I need a break.”

  Having made this pronouncement, Natali unfolded herself from the floor and began an odd stretching routine. Dex noticed Izzy watching her.

  “A break sounds good,” he said and stretched his arms over his head. When he looked around, everyone else appeared to unfreeze, as if Natali’s words released some sort of spell. An awakening of the zombified.

  “Should we get food or something?” Izzy asked.

  Dex’s stomach growled. “Chinese?”

  “Pizza,” Jonny said without looking up from his phone. Dex scowled at him but gave in. Pizza was cheapest anyway.

  “Fine. Pizza. Everyone good with that?”

  It took a while to work out what to order. Between the veggies and Steph, who was coeliac, three different orders had to be placed. Once accomplished, though, he could finally escape for a slash.

  He ran into Nick on the way back from the bathroom.

  “How’s the Peterloo stuff going, mate?” he asked. Nick pushed his glasses back up his nose before responding, and Dex tamped down the ridiculous desire to kiss the dip in his lower lip.

  “Pretty good.” His gaze was slightly unfocused, like he was a thousand miles away in his head. “Though another week to finish it all up would be nice.”

  “Tell me about it.” Dex had stood apart from Nick, for his own safety or Nick’s he wasn’t sure, but now he wished he had engineered a close-body situation. Which was obviously stupid, because if you had to engineer it, it wasn’t going to happen either way.

  He wanted Nick to acknowledge it. To acknowledge him. To acknowledge this thing between them. He wanted Nick to strip that wall he’d built around himself and to show Dex that he maybe mattered in a different way from everybody else. If Izzy was right, of course.